Street Fighter IV Benchmark

Street Fighter IV uses a new, built-from-scratch graphics engine that enables CAPCOM to tune the visuals and performance to fit the needs of the game, as well as run well on lower-end hardware. Although the engine is based on DX9 capabilities, it does add soft shadows, High Dynamic Range lighting, depth of field effects, and motion blur to enhance the game experience.

The game is multi-threaded, with rendering, audio, and file I/O all running in different threads. The development team has also worked to maintain a relatively constant CPU load in all parts of the game so that on-screen performance does not change dramatically in different game scenarios.

That said, the results are...unexpected. Luci Virtu kicks in in i-Mode to provide excellent performance, but overclocking the Intel Core i7 2600K processor adds virtually nothing to the performance. I'd guess this means that the frame rates in either case are GPU-limited, and that we would probably see more distinction in the results with a more powerful graphics card.

Blender

Blender is an open-source, free content creation suite of 3D modeling, rendering, and animation capabilities. Originally released in 2002, it's available in versions for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and several Unix distributions. It supports rigid and soft-body objects and can handle the draping and animation of cloth, as well as the rendering and animation of smoke, water, and general particle handling.

Our Blender test renders multiple frames of an animation of a chunk of ice, with translucency and reflections. Rendering of this model uses ray-tracing algorithms.

From these results it's obvious that Blender processes are entirely CPU based, with no work done on the GPU. The overclocked configuration is 27% faster.

Comments

Will the time ever come, when you will be able to flick that switch on the front of your case that switches off your HD6990/GTX590 card,reverting back to using your integrated cpu graphics, for when you just want to surf the net?

Therefore saving you not only wear & tear on your fancy new amd/nvidia card but also electric, which lets face it, ain't cheap nowadays...

Not much bad to say about these new boards. Intel has the cash to develop just about any idea they can imagine to see if it works. With gigantic resources to dip into, they are a force to be reckoned with.

Technically, yes, but unless you type more than, say, 100 keys per second, you're never gonna notice the lower latency of PS/2. Its only real advantage is that it support n-key rollover, whereas I think USB tops out at 6 keys...still enough for humans. Cyborgs, aliens, and keyboard testing machines might want more...

There are four slots for RAM, as several of the pictures, including the one on the first page of the review, clearly show. With 4G DIMMs you could put a maximum of 16G in this motherboard. So you'll need an X58-based system to go any higher than that.

I make some use of 12G of RAM on my Hackintosh, mainly because I run Windows 7 in a virtual machine pretty often while the Mac's doing stuff in the background. Actually, I don't think I've ever measured RAM use above 8G, but I think it could happen!

I'm confused on how virtu will switch on the integrated graphics, I mean do you connect the board as well as the gpu connectors to the same monitor or do the on-board connectors let you switch between either solutions.

All your questions are answered in our separate article "Lucid Virtu Graphics Virtualization Technology". The quick answer is "There's only one connection, either to the motherboard or the graphics card depending on the Virtu mode you select."

A quick question about the heatsink for the Z68 test system. What fan configuration did you use for the heatsink (i.e, Dual-pull or dual-push).

Also was there any clearance issues with the heatsink and the ram? Would you say that the ram had fairly tall heatsinks or not?Would you say the ram you used is similar in dimensions to the G.skill RipjawsX?Thanks

The fans for the Silver Arrow were set up as pull-push, actually. Putting the fan in front of the first set of fins would have blocked the first two RAM sockets. As it was, the first RAM socket was blocked by the heat sink.

On P67/Z68 motherboards I've used, the CPU socket is fairly close to the RAM sockets, and low profile memory would be a good idea. The G.SKILL memory I used wasn't low profile!

So if you had the fans in pull-push, does that mean both fans were in the middle cavity of the Silver Arrow? (sorry just a bit confused on how you configured that)

I checked out the P8Z68V-PRO manual and it recommends installing RAM in the second/fourth slots, so I guess it wouldn't matter too much if the heatsink blocked the first RAM slot. (unless I planned to fill them all up).

Been thinking of getting G.SKILL RipjawsX, which I've checked are about 40mm tall, and the height of the Silver Arrow's base to the first fin is 40.87; it should just slip in. Of course I'll probably have to position the fans left||centre instead of centre||right; or use a 120mm fan.

if you see here ##tomshardware.co.uk/asrock-z68-extreme4-asus-p8z68-v-pro-gigabyte-z68x-ud3h-b3,review-32188-2.html seems that asrock is better for more reason and asus have just 1% more performance that asus.. some one confirm this?

I bought the Zalman CNPS 9900 Max CPU fan, but the Backplate that connects to the motherboard does not fit this motherboard. Does anyone know of a good CPU cooling fan that fits the ASUS P8 Z68-V Pro OR a different backplate that fits both the fan and this particular motherboard?